Mating Algorithmically
As part of my ongoing research into the many ways and mores of social media, I recently signed up for Ashley Madison, a dating site that specialises in people looking to have an affair. In a previous experiment, I joined eHarmony to check out its Christian bias.
I haven’t reported on these here before; although my eHarmony adventure has made it into a short story.
Both of these, maybe eHarmony more so, are based on algorithmic mating. This is the idea that if you match someone on 42 or so dimensions, then you are very likely to have a successful relationship. After a bit of Guided Communications, you’re ready for the altar. Or not, with Ashley.
This kind of social engineering is very prevalent today. The idea is that if you take some couples who have been married happily for 30 years, and profile them for commonalities, then you can use the same profile to predict happiness for new matching pairs. Or not.
While it’s obvious that couples must have some critical things in common, the idea that I would wake up every morning to someone like me in 42 or more dimensions would bore me rigid. I prefer to go with the biological theory that we seek to mate with people whose DNA is different from our own.
So back to Ashley Madison. Apparently there are several thousand women in my small town looking for an affair.
Several have sent me an email, suggesting we hook up.
Here’s the interesting bit.
I don’t have a photo on the site. I don’t even have a profile of any kind. Just a user ID and city.
Maybe there’s only one important dimension here.
But cuteness aside, let's not be too judgmental. People are desperately lonely.
These sites and others like them (and there are many) are running filters on profiles to match people, in the same way as FaceBook suggests candidates for friends. In the same way that Amazon and Google do it far more successfully with inanimate objects on the long tail.
If you've read my other articles here, you'll know that I'm a big believer in running filters on social networks. But I find that I balk when it comes to my own life.
The questions never seem to fit who I am. For example, eHarmony coerces answers to present my family values, but it never asks if I am pro-choice (I am). In the same way, the job questions always seem to have been devised by someone who hasn't got a clue.
Whether it's a job, friends, love or sex I think there are only three important questions about fit: Can you do it? Do you want to do it? Can we work together successfully and have fun doing this?
And they can only be answered in person.
